The fourth book in the Jack Frost series. Jack Frost, scruffy and insubordinate, foul-mouthed and fearless, staggers from crisis to crisis, his bumbling modus operandi disguising his extraordinary powers of detection. The series has been has been adapted for television as the perennially popular A Touch of Frost starring David Jason and I enjoy them all. Frost is far more irreverent, sarcastic and undisciplined than on TV. He also smokes like a chimney (maybe too incorrect for TV). Mullett is not just the stuffed shirt of the TV series, but is weak, ambitious and unpleasant. Rather surprisingly he drives a Porsche.
A young boy is found dead in a rubbish heap, suffocated and with one finger cut off. Another boy is missing. A psychopath is stabbing babies as they lie sleeping in their cots. A fifteen-year-old has been abducted, then found naked by the roadside. The corpse of a petty criminal is discovered, with the tops of three fingers chopped off. The small children of a carpet fitter are murdered; his wife's body is found on the railway line. A supermarket MD is sent a ransom demand for the missing boy, accompanied by one of the child's fingers.

Release #6 for 2017 ... 

Caught at today's meeting.

Frost is a bit of an anachronism, a throwback who relies on his gut-instinct more than fancy technological investigative techniques. His boss, Mr Mullet, who is shallow and sychophantic, hates Frost, hates his scruffiness, his off-colour humour and his laziness towards doing paperwork and his habit of bending the rules, will do anything to get rid of Frost. But Frost has this habit of coming out on top

In to the bookcase.